Centro de medios de NYRR

As a four-time Olympic medalist, 16-time world champion, and the third-fastest marathoner in history, Kenenisa Bekele is one of the world’s greatest long-distance runners of all time. He will be making his United Airlines NYC Half debut – his second time racing with NYRR after finishing sixth at the 2021 TCS New York City Marathon.

Bekele is the second of six children and began running in primary school when he was inspired by Haile Gebrselassie. With the ability to accelerate very quickly at the end of long-distance races, Bekele worked his way up the junior and senior international competition circuit, ultimately winning the 10,000-meter world title at the 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2009 World Athletics Championships, in addition to the 5,000-meter title in 2009. He held both the 5,000- and 10,000-meter world records for nearly 15 years until they were broken in 2020.

In his Olympic debut at the Athens 2004 Games, he won gold in the 10,000 and silver in the 5,000, and four years later in Beijing took gold in both distances. He has also won 11 gold medals at the World Cross Country Championships.

In 2014, he produced what was then the sixth-fastest marathon debut ever, winning the Paris Marathon in a course-record time of 2:05:04. In 2016, he won the Berlin Marathon in what was then the third-fastest time in history. He has also finished on the podium twice at the London Marathon. 

Bekele won the 2019 Berlin Marathon in what was then the second-fastest time ever, only two seconds off the world-record time set by Eliud Kipchoge in Berlin the year prior. Last December, he shattered the masters world record by more than a minute at the Valencia Marathon with a time of 2:04:19.

He is married to Ethiopian actress Danawit Gebregziabher and off the track owns a construction business, having built commercial buildings in the Addis Ababa and Arsi regions of Ethiopia.